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Talk:Alpha Teams
Speculative? I am curious as to why the original editor considers the existance of the Alpha Teams speculative. There are two or three mentions of them in World War Z of them by different parties, all of whom are credible, and I believe most of whom take some responsibility for being part of the administration that sanctioned and assigned them. Regardless, even if there is evidence in the book that they are a black-ops "Off the record" sort of task force, it is not right to use the parenthesis in the title. You would just mention it (and emphasis it using numerous font options, or even a Template:Alert) in the text of the article itself. See Redeker Plan. -- Philodox 17:30, March 20, 2010 (UTC) Another note: Check out page 52 of WWZ. D'Ambrosia is a pretty high ranking official, and I think we can take his confirmation on the existance of the Alpha Teams as zombie exterminators as solid evidence. Also, I think Waino admits to having benn in an Alpha Team as well. -- Philodox 18:09, March 20, 2010 (UTC) What about the families of the people in those areas? Or what if some people were out of town at the time?--Bobzombie 20:20, March 26, 2010 (UTC) Why? Because it was ONLY two or three mentions. No where near enough for a full fledged documented and sourced page. For example whoever put up the part saying they were uneffective was completely wrong! WWZ clearly states that the Alpha Teams were extremley effective. ''Their mission was to observe and report. Get your facts straight.--BobZombie There found my password. Secondly I never said the Alpha Teams didn't exsist. Yes they exsisted and I don't remember Wainio saying that. I realized it might be a good idea not to make any enemies (especially with an admin) so we should talk about speculations first. I don't recall there being any eye witnesses. :Grover Carlson, Former White House Chief of Staff (in Amarillo, Texas), and Travis D'Ambrosia, current Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (in the Finland part), and former high ranking UN official both confirm it. Carlson was an active part in their founding. These men are of too high reknown for their testimony to constitute hearsay. Sure, when the Alpha Teams were active, no one would ever admit to approving of their existance. But the testimony is from after the rebuilding, and it leaves little room for speculation (other than the specifics of who, where and how they operated). :And perhaps it should be reworded, but yes, I meant to indicate that they were very successful at phase one. But phase two was out of the Alpha Teams hands, and that is what failed. And that the Alpha Teams were the most aggresive part of the overall early operation against the zombies - one intended to prevent their numbers from reaching the hundreds of thousands. And obviously, that operation failed. :D'Ambrosia says the Alpha Teams terminated zombies "with extreme prejudice". While I admit there is a certain amount of recon that must precede that, I think there is little room for debate that they were zombie exterminators. :You're right about Wainio so far. I'll check more when I get home. :-- Philodox 16:58, March 26, 2010 (UTC) Okay got me there. Go ahead and change it. This gave me an idea Hey anybody want to help me make some Zombie FanFic? Would like to make a collaborative project about the early days of the outbreak. And possibly about the Marines at Rockisland mentioned in WWZ. :If I have time, I'll take a look at a draft, and give you some feedback. If you do make it here, please check out how I'd like the pages to be named. There is a Fan Fiction category, and I renamed all those files a certain way, so that it doesn't blend in too much with the articles. :-- Philodox 16:58, March 26, 2010 (UTC) Composition Umm, an Alpha Team is specifically a U.S. Army Special Forces team in the modern world. I would assume that that is what WWZ is referring to; upon graduation from Special Forces School, a new Special Forces operative is assigned to first one of the Special Forces Groups, and then joins an Alpha Team in that group in whatever MOS he had specialized in. SEALs, Army Rangers, Delta, etc are not referred to as "Alpha teams", it's a designation that is, as far as I know, reserved solely for Green Berets. Just my two cents, but I would therefore assume that an "Alpha team" in the world of WWZ would not be a reference to any of the aforementioned Special Operations forces, but a reference to specifically Special Forces. And before anyone argues that an SF operative is primarily used for training, all SF Soldiers receive extensive firearms and hand-to-hand combat training. In addition, the training bit only supports this; what Brooks refers to as "Special Forces guys" in the book are deployed to civilian zones in the Eastern U.S. to train the civilians in combat, as per what the usual use for USASF is (although training militia, not U.S. citizens). Those same "Special Forces guys" are referred to previously by d'Ambrosia as the components of the Alpha teams. Anywho, I'm going to revise the page to reflect that. Army.Cadet 22:16, May 17, 2011 (UTC) :Your assumption is incorrect. The author of WWZ specifically described them as small, special teams specifically assembled from various military branches for specific anti-zombie missions, not unlike many other "black ops" teams. I don't have all of the word-for-word quotes in a cut/pastable form handy, but check out above, the paragraph that begins with the name Grover. :Perhaps he (like myself) didn't know what you brought up, and would have done better to use a different name. Regardless, please don't remove anything from that page. However, it would be useful to add that the term has long been in use to describe what it does in the real world. : — [[User:Philodox|'<<— Philodox —>>']] talk 22:39, May 17, 2011 (UTC) ::Upon further inspection, Brooks only writes "special forces" in reference to the soldiers in the Alpha Teams. He does not specify whether he means the Berets, or the broader definition. Due to inspecifity, and due to Brooks' already considerable lack of knowledge when it comes to these sorts of particulars, I'm ruling that it is too vague to tell for sure, and that the article should be equally vague, and likewise only say "special forces". :: — [[User:Philodox|'<<— Philodox —>>''']] talk 22:58, May 17, 2011 (UTC) :: ::With all due respect, sir, I feel like with the amount of research that Brooks put into the book, he would have also researched the military aspects of anything he was writing. "Special Forces", as a designation in the United States military, refers solely to the United States Army Special Forces. All other forces from all branches, be they SEALs, Rangers, Deltas, PsyWar specialists, MarSoc, pararescue, or what have you, are referred to as "special operations" (the commanding unit is actually referred to as SOCOM - Special Operations COMmand). The distinction is even, I believe, included on Wikipedia, so I believe that Brooks would have come across that in his research, as well as the fact that an Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA, or Alpha team) is a Special Forces team, considering how everything else was researched very in-depth. My apologies if I'm coming across as a know-it-all (I'm going to be attempting to qualify for USASF soon), and feel free to disregard everything I just said. :: ::Army.Cadet 12:39, June 5, 2011 (UTC)